Second Best
by Ayrith
Summary: [InuTaisho family] Love doesn't always heal wounds. Strength doesn't always assure victory. Denial doesn't always prevent the enivitable. But revenge is always sweet to the bitter.


_Inspired by Aejavu's "Ficlet Corner". (Read "Big Sleeves to Fill" Read it I say!)_

**Second Best**

**By Ayrith**

He was sprinting through the woods now, alone and angry. The call of his name rode on the wind, warped by the open air and the distance, but even from so far away, he could hear her worry. Her hesitance. Her longing. Part of him was glad she was letting him go, letting him face the demons of his past alone, because inevitably he _had _to leave, and every moment spent otherwise was wasting away, was counting done. And then he exploded and there was no way to stop him, and so she had let him go, because she worried, and she cared and he _needed_ to move on.

So he left her.

(Maybe, for once in her life, Kagome would learn what it felt like to be utterly alone.)

He was sprinting through the woods now, on a mission that might one day glue together all his broken pieces. He had been told long ago that time mended all wounds; well that was a fucking loud of shit. What he needed, the one thing that might fix him, was something entirely different then the years he had spent waiting for himself to heal. What he needed was what he had been trying to elude for so long, because he had always been in denial.

But now he had snapped and it was time to exact his revenge. And it sent rushes of adrenaline in him at the mere thought. Because for once he felt free from his mother's soft voice in his head, pleading with him to not do anything. He should have been exhilarated, he should have been rejoicing.

He wasn't.

With a guttural cry, he lashed out mid-run, tearing the slim bough of a tree clear off its trunk. He was angry, livid. A part of him, the part of him that was irrational and ill-tempered and still very much stuck in the past, that other part of his was angry. Angry at the ground beneath his flying feet, angry at the trees and the leaves and the people he was leaving behind him, and the people he had already left behind, so long ago. Angry at everything and everyone, but mostly at himself.

"Damn you…" He muttered, growled to the sky, to the wind, to the tall powerful figure standing proudly in his minds eye. A flicker of silver hair against sunlight, a solemn face and dark golden eyes, it made him angry, and with a cry he sped up faster, destroying everything in his way on a mad pursuit forward. He followed his nose, followed the scent of his brother, but even as he took chase, he almost cried, but not quite.

Because he had lost everything to a man in silver that he knew only as a stranger. Because the man had stolen his mother, who was his only family. Because he, the lowly hanyou, could never take the damn man's place. Because he, the lowly hanyou, was weaker and slower and always the inferior. Because damn it all, everything that the he had always wanted was embodied into that bastard of a youkai.

So Inuyasha took up his father's damn fang, his own fang, and tracked down his half-brother, who was the flesh of their father and the symbol of their father's pride. Because their father had been great, and had never doubted his oldest son's strength –giving him a sword of healing—like he had doubted his hanyou son's – giving him a sword of destruction. Because Inuyasha hated it and him and everything, and when the time came _then_ it would be satisfactory; to see a part of his father kill that which the man had held most high.

(Maybe, for once in his life, --and in his death because to Inuyasha they were both one and the same-- Inu-Taisho would learn what it felt like to loose what was most precious.)

In reality, all his worries and pains and sorrows came together to form in a single, solitary explanation; because Sesshoumaru was a the most prominent reminder -- replacement -- of Inu-Taisho.

And so Inuyasha would hurt _him_ instead. Because you can't destroy the man who stole everything – who stole your mother from you –, the man that loved you but was unable to _not _hurt you, the man that you couldn't replace even if you tried, the man that was your bloody damn father. 'Cause he's already dead. Along with almost all hope of a new beginning.

He was sprinting through the woods faster now, catching the glimmer of silver and white in the trees up ahead. He might not have had the heart to kill his father, or his brother for that matter, but at least he could make them suffer like he had suffered, like his mother had suffered that so long ago.

And maybe revenge might be able to sweeten his bitterness. Revenge might be able to cure him.

Even if it would only be second best.

(And maybe, for once in his life, Sesshoumaru would finally learn what it felt like to never be enough.)

(And again, for the millionth time in his life, Inuyasha learned what it felt like to ache, even as he ran eagerly forward.)


End file.
